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Moderate earthquake hits mountainous Lake Sarez in Tajikistan

DUSHANBE, March 18. /TASS/. A magnitude 5.3 hit Tajikistan’s mountainous areas in the vicinity of Lake Sarez, a spokesman for the Tajik Academy of Sciences’ Geophysical Service told TASS on Friday.

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"The epicenter of the earthquake measuring 5.3 points on the Richter scale was located near Lake Sarez in the mountains some 330 kilometers southeast of the capital city of Dushanbe," the spokesman said, adding that earth tremors were felt in the city of Khorog, the administrative center of the Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous region, and in Dushanbe.

No information is immediately available about damage caused by the earthquake.

This was the third major quake near Lake Sarez in the past four months. Lake Sarez emerged in 1911 after a devastating earthquake. The most powerful earthquake of a magnitude 7.2 hit the Pamir Mountains in early December 2015.

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